Happy Holi Day

You may have seen pictures like the one above: people with their faces covered in vibrant colors, with only their eyes and teeth visible as they smile merrily for the camera. This is Holi, perhaps the most joyful of Hindu festivals. In Nepal, Holi is a two-day affair celebrated on the first day in the hills and the second day in the plains. It’s a particularly fun day for youths, who travel from home to home with colored powder and water balloons challenging anyone within range to share their fun.

Holi gets its name from a demoness named Holika, the sister of the mythical King Hiranyakasyapu who commanded everyone worship him. But the king’s small son, Prince Prahlad, refused to do so, praying to the Hindu gods instead. Since boyhood, Prahlad had been an ardent devotee of Lord Krishna (an incarnation of the god Vishnu) despite the interdiction of his father. When all methods of punishment failed to shake Prahalad's faith, the king ordered his son trampled to death by an elephant, but when Prahlad advanced upon it chanting the sacred names of Krishna, the great beast humbly knelt before him. Many times the king tried to kill his son, but each time Prahlad was saved for Lord Krishna protects those who love him. At last, the king ordered the demoness Holika to kill Prahalad. Possessing the ability to walk through fire unharmed, Holika seized Prahalad and entered a fire with him. Prahalad chanted the names of the gods and was saved; Holika, unaware that her powers were would only be effective if she entered the fire alone, perished. The Holi festival celebrates Holika's extermination, Prahalad's virtue, and Krishna's supremacy.

My Holi went as follows: immediately after I finished morning daal bhaat, a group of guys showed up at my home and proceeded to mirthfully cover me in red, pink, purple, orange, and green powder. 

I’d met a few of them before, but others were strangers to me. They handed me a bag of Vermillion and invited me to join in the fun. My family encouraged me to go with them, adding “but don’t drink any alcohol.”

We walked to the local bazaar, where a number of small children were running about trying to avoid getting dowsed in color. I bought a few more bags of powder (green, in honor of St. Patrick’s day) and set to smearing it on every one of the shop owners' faces. We continued on through the villages, spontaneously whooping and hollering and throwing up our hands.

We played Holi with anyone interested, halting passersby, motorcycles, and even taxis to spread the glee of the day. Some were wary of our intentions, but the guys were very respectful of the extent to which people wished to participate. More devious groups of adolescents have been known to indiscriminately throw powder at any and everyone, and some even mix glass, mud, and into their otherwise innocuous ammunition. But our fun was harmless, and I found myself continually warming to my newfound friends.

We stopped from time to time: to ask for water at a stranger’s home, to chat with an acquaintance, to buy more powder from a shop. At one point, we took a break under a tree, and I watched as the guys emptied out the tobacco from cigarettes, mixed it with weed (which, true to its name, literally grows all over the place here), and stuffed it back in. While they lit up, they took it upon themselves to teach me some profane Nepali words that aren't listed in my dictionary. We got to talking about girls, marriage, the caste system, and our hobbies, finding we had quite bit in common.

A bit later, after a much-needed break and snack at a roadside shop, my friends revealed their plan. We would make our way to the Bawai River, where we’d wash the powder from our skin and sunbathe on the beach. On the way, we’d buy alcohol and assemble ingredients for a "salad" to enjoy by the shore. This sounded just great, although I was a bit apprehensive about drinking and swimming. A passerby had told us that earlier in the day, a man who had been drinking had died at the very river. But the guys assured me that we would just be celebrating, not drinking to excess.

After another hour of walking, we reached a Tharu village where my friends hoped to buy some booze. Alcohol consumption is prohibited for Chetris and Brahmins (especially in their own homes), but many Tharus brew their own alcohol. Raksi is a strong, distilled millet wine; a more mild, fermented rice mixture is chang. We bought two bottles of raksi and a large container of chang. At a shop down the road, we bought soap, shampoo, ramen, and razors to cut up the vegetables for the salad.

Soon the road led us out of the village and into the fields. Some of the guys hopped the fences, yanking up onions, cauliflower, and cabbage. One plucked a bunch of cilantro from a garden; another seized a bundle of peas. “It’s not stealing,” they said. “These are our neighbors.” And, indeed, the farmers working in the fields didn’t reprimand them.

We turned off the road and into the fields, walking along the narrow pathways that divide one paddy from another. At some point we reached a small stream, which the guys wearing shoes crossed with a bounding leap. I tried to do the same, but, wearing flip-flops, was unable to get enough momentum and crashed into the shallows on the far side. I’m already notorious among my fellow volunteers for falling—off my bike, down hills, into other people—so this makes one more to add to the list.

Around 4 o’clock, we finally reached the river. Walking for over of four hours in the hot sun had left me pretty beat. My concern about the dangers of drowning, however, was allayed. The river was only about two feet deep and moving at a gentle current—the man who’d died earlier must have been insanely drunk.

After washing our hands (though virtually none of the powder, which had soaked into my skin, came off), we began preparing the “salad.” 

Once finished, we began passing around the bottles of alcohol and digging in, chatting about our families, our work, and Nepal.

As the casual conversation mixed with the spirits, I felt some of my energy returning to me. Somehow, sitting by the side of a river in Nepal with bunch of guys covered in multicolored powder eating ramen salad and drinking homemade wine, I felt totally at home. I’ll never experience anything quite like it again.

We finished the last drops and scraps of our picnic as evening began to fall. We stripped down to our boxers and dove into the water, swimming with the current toward the setting sun. I scrubbed vigorously with the soap, but some things just can’t be wiped off. Hastily, we put our clothes back on and set out. As we strolled through the streets, one of the drunker guys started singing “Resham Firiri,” the only Nepali song whose lyrics I know. I joined in, and soon we were all bellowing the lyrics. One by one, they turned off the road toward their respective homes, until eventually I was walking alone.

It was dark by the time I reached my own home, more than half an hour late for evening daal bhaat. I tried my best to hide my tipsiness from my suspicious host family, but I’m not sure how successful I was. At some point I should probably stand up for my right to enjoy the occasional drink, but I was too content with the day to stir up anything tonight. After dinner, I retreated to my room and slept better than I had in weeks.

The Beginnings of Fusion

The past month has been busy. On February 16, I left my village to attend Peace Corps In-Service Training, an opportunity for my group to enhance our language and technical skills, which, on paper, sounded somewhat interesting. In reality, however, it meant nine days of 8-5 that mostly took place in a classroom. Our technical training topics contained a large amount of jargon which may mean nothing to you: multi-use water systems, micro-irrigation, plastic house construction for off-seasonal vegetable production, integrated pest management, collection center development, goat farming, preserving nutrition in food preparation, and solar dryer construction. Some of the health volunteers were chagrined that so much of the focus was on agriculture, but I learned a good deal that I hope to apply back in my village. Nevertheless, it was a pretty grueling week.

Construction of a plastic tunnel to allow vegetable production in the off-season 

 Drip irrigation, which minimizes water use

Combining plants that repel pests with manure, urine, and ashes as a part of integrated pest management 

Using locally-available materials to construct solar dryers for fruit and vegetable preservation

Thankfully, the training was held in Tansen, a small city in the middle hills of central Nepal. The change of scenery was a breath of fresh air; I saw mountains for the first time in three months, and the terrace farms and winding roads brought me back to my time in the hills where I spent pre-service training.



After finishing a training one afternoon, I hiked with two volunteers up to Srinagar Hill, which purportedly is the only place in Nepal from which the Himalaya (largest mountain range in the world) and Terai (one of the lowest plains in the world) can be seen. Unfortunately, the weather was cloudy and the lookout tower was closed, but the forty-minute hike was still well worth it.

 

In addition, the city of Tansen has great character. It’s considerably less touristy, trafficked, and developed than Kathmandu or Pokhara. Its steep, meandering streets coalesce at roundabouts with statues and temples at their center. Shops line the roads selling handmade metalwork and traditional dhaka fabric, for which the region is famed. Many of us came to view the city as a hilly hideaway to which we hope to return over the course of our service.

Pictures of Dhaka, metalworks

And finally, it was simply nice to see everyone again. We spent our free time in small groups wandering the city, chatting in hotel rooms, and even working out together.

Conversations almost always turned to our more unique stories from site. One of the more interesting was a volunteer’s host mother who, one night in the heat of maternal passion, affectionately bit her on the lip. Another friend’s host family had refused to accept his rent money, viewing him as their own son. One volunteer had been mixing up the words for “body” and “vagina,” which made her family giggle every time she thought she was saying “I’m going to wash my body!” But there were dark sides, too. Some volunteers had encountered sexual harassment, racism, host family drama, financial difficulty, chronic illness, and other stressors. Discussing our troubles together was a healthy way to let off some steam. We also had some fun. Some of us went to watch a Nepali film in a grungy movie theater. With a day off on Saturday, our Friday night festivities got a little out of hand. The Hindu festival Maha Shiva Ratri, which resembles 4/20, was also celebrated during our stay in Tansen. Returning back to our sites—to once-a-week bucket showers, twice-a-day daal bhaat, and 24/7 Nepali—was a major adjustment for many of us.

I, however, did not go straight back to my village. One of the older group’s volunteers had invited interested volunteers to her site for a mushroom training, and I eagerly asked to go along. It was fun to spend time with the senior group of volunteers, whose experience working and living in Nepal has been invaluable.

After two full days of travel, I arrived back in Shreegaun two weeks after I had left, feeling informed with my new knowledge from the trainings and motivated from hearing about the work of my fellow volunteers. I was simultaneously amazed, humbled, and inspired by how much some people have accomplished in just three months—some of us have started coffee farming, planted fruit orchards, begun beekeeping, delivered maternal health trainings, and built cookstoves. And we’ve accomplished little things that don’t show up in official reports: made friends, tutored family members, overcome personal and social challenges. I felt revitalized, and ready to take on everything.

To my extreme grief, my garden had been left in shambles in my absence. A storm had destroyed part of the fence, providing access for the chickens and goats to eat all the leaves off of all my radishes. My nursery had collapsed, although my family had been able to transplant the cauliflower saplings. Blight had attacked and decimated my potato plants. My bed of beans had been trampled, leaving a lot of wilted sprouts with little life in them.



After a night of wallowing, I set to reviving it, reconstructing and strengthening the fence, planting flowers along the perimeter, pulling out the stunted radishes, harvesting the blighted potatoes (which actually gave a pretty good yield), and planting some more potatoes. In the near future, I plan to plant some small herbs, bell peppers, and okra, expand the garden’s size.

Then I set to doing a house-to-house survey to assess my village’s desire and need for improved cookstoves, which reduce smoke, cooking time, and wood consumption. With the help of my friend Risi, a 22-year-old guy who lives just down the road from me, I visited 78 homes over the course of five days. In an incredible stroke of luck, I also met a nearby man with nine years of experienced constructing stoves. With my village’s data and his expertise, we will begin building stoves in interested families’ homes in the upcoming week.

Friday and Saturday (my supposed day off) were two of the most “Peace Corps” days I’ve had yet. After conducting my cookstove survey in the morning, I headed to my health center to attend a meeting (which never happened) and to deliver my weekly nutrition training to pregnant mothers (which was cancelled due to lack of audience). My plans spoiled, I biked to my local bazaar, where an NGO happened to be delivering an HIV/AIDS training for a group of pregnant mothers. I decided to sit in and was immediately asked to share my knowledge and experienced with HIV/AIDS, which I was actually able to do in Nepali. As I was leaving the training, some of the women from the community’s women’s group called me over. They were making clothes, weaving sweaters on a loom, sewing pants at a machine, and knitting socks and hats. They offered to teach me, helping me make my own burgundy-colored sweater vest.

 

Next I was to meet the cookstove maker, but was sidetracked when a number of villagers called me over to an election for new chairperson of the school. I sat with the men for a while, trying to make out the content of the candidates’ speech. As it grew late, I took my leave and biked ten minutes to meet the cookstove man. He enthusiastically agreed to begin working the next week and to reduce his price for those who couldn’t afford the going rate. I returned to the bazaar to in time for volleyball practice, which made for an excellent conclusion to the day.

The following day, I delivered a compost training to a local farmers’ group. Very gratefully, my friend, an agricultural veterinarian, attended and helped a great deal with clarifying things beyond my language ability. Even though the owner of the home failed to collect to materials to actually make the compost, the training went very well. I’m looking forward to working with the group more in the future, giving monthly or bimonthly trainings to help them boost their agricultural production.



After the training, my friend Risi’s father asked if I would help him to make a garden behind their house. We spent the afternoon clearing the land, loosening the soil, and beginning to make the beds, all the while chatting about America and Nepal. That evening, I thought that exhaustion from such a busy week would catch up with me, but somehow it didn’t. If anything, I feel just as full of vigor as when I returned to site a week earlier. I feel like things are starting to come together, that all the energy I’ve put into my work is starting to generate something with a momentum, energy, and power of its own.

I’ll have to end this post now, because my host mother has just entered my room to cover my face with red powder. Today is Holi, a very colorful festival in honor of the Hindu god Krishna. I’ll share more about it in my next post.